THE BELEAGUERED INDIVIDUAL:A STUDY OF
TWENTIETH-CENTURYAMERICAN WAR NOVELS

DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to all the individuals who served in America's wars,
especially those wounded in body and spirit and those who gave their lives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank the many individuals who assisted me along the way to
making my dream become a reality. First and foremost is my dissertation director
Allen Dunn and the other committee members, Charles Maland, B. J. Leggett, and
Vejas Liulevicius. Without their guidance and patience this dissertation would not
have been possible.

Many people have offered me encouragement and moral support over the
years. For this I especially want to thank Tanya Ainsworth, Kirsten Benson, Allison
Carey, Abdi Hussein, my parents Paul and Mary Christle, Barbara Lawson, Thomas
Christle, Mary Ann Keane, and Marc Christle. Financial support for which
I am deeply grateful was provided by the English Department and the College
of Arts and Sciences.

ABSTRACT

This study examines twentieth-century American war novels. Many
American writers use the battlefield as the stage upon which
to work out their explorations of what it means to be an individual
in the twentieth century, an individual mired in the mass culture
of the modern industrial world. Thus, I argue that for these authors
war is a sort of intensified experience of and an allegory for the
world at large. The novelists I have discussed all seem to believe
that our modern technological society tends to diminish and reify
individuals, thus alienating them from one another. To combat this
tendency many of the authors are searching their materials for any
signs that our society might be capable of achieving better
communication between individuals, more cooperation, and a
recognition of the interdependence that binds humanity together
while affirming the value of the individual. I claim that their
novels tend to reduce human aspirations to either naturalistic
or existential dramas--naturalistic in that individuals are at
the mercy of circumstance or existential in that isolated
individuals accept the responsibility of their own freedom.
Responses to the plight of the modern individual range from
totally hopeless to cautiously optimistic. These novelists
often obscure the role of community in the creation and
maintenance of individual identity and posit an ambivalent
freedom, at best. Some, though, do attempt to provide a model
of what constitutes a genuine community. Ultimately, I argue
that a significant amount of hope for the future of the
individual can be found in twentieth-century American war
novels. Beleaguered individuals are portrayed holding positive
values and taking positive action often enough to give the reader
something to ponder and reason to hope.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Click here to go to the PDF version of this dissertation. The exact pagination of the original hardbound copy, as found in the John C. Hodges Library on the campus of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (call number: Thesis 2001b.C36), is available, as is an Index which is not in the original. The proper academic bibliographic citation for the PDF version, using MLA format, is as follows: